Never Admit to Anything
by Zoo Crew
Summary: Speedsters with no sense of personal space, babysitting for the most dangerous toddler and ten year old in existence, walking in at the exact wrong time, the banning of the letter W, the most awkward love triangle in the history of existence and liking a boy with some unresolved anger issues. And more then a few skeletons in the closet. All in a days work for Hafsa El-Amin


This is my first time doing this and I apologize in advance if the characters are too AU. Review because thats my lifeforce! Also I own nothing but my own awesomeness

Bialyan-American Hafsa El-Amin prefers to forget the homeland her family fled when she was only a little girl and get on with her life in Boston. That is, until she nearly charbroilers a would be mugger. Suddenly she's thrust into a world of espionage justice and superheroes that she's only seen on tv in times of crisis. (or when the latest super freak has decided to throw a major hissy fit) So now the new superhero has to deal with a brutal training regime, high stakes missions and not looking completely stupefied when she see's Batman walk in. Also speedsters with no sense of personal space, babysitting for the most dangerous toddler and ten year old in existence, walking in at the exact wrong time, the banning of the letter W, the most awkward love triangle in the history of existence and liking a boy with some unresolved anger issues. Oh, and the crippling secret she hides that could destroy everything she's worked so hard for.

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><p><em>"Italics"<em>= Spoken Languages other than English

Prologue

I don't remember much about the "Mother Country." Partly because I was only five when we left it and partly because sometimes its easier to block out things that make you sad and confused. I remember the inside of our house of course, all soft brown walls smelling of spices beginning with the letter C and old books and laundry detergent. The gardens, I remember those too. All around a scrubby red desert but in the palace garden it might has well have been the best maintained rainforest in all the world, with the artificial lake and the lush tropical flowers and trees. The palace too, shining all in gleaming white and gold like a jewel in a city of soft brown and red sand. The soldiers dressed all in black, faces hidden with huge guns slung over their shoulders, matching up the streets, the thump of their boots echoing off the paving stones and bouncing back to them off the walls. I remember sitting on the floor of that very same palaces kitchen as my mother cooked and the waitstaff, all men, bustled and carried dishes up to the royal apartments. I also remember the day we escaped.

I couldn't understand why until much later. Typical kid, thinking everything is fine when it really isn't. One day Dad had just had enough. He used to be the queens… well I guess you could call it publicist. Making up rhetoric, getting posters printed, writing speeches, organizing appearances… and sifting through old Bialyan records in the government library to erase or disprove anyone elses claim to the throne. Typical dictator management stuff. And I guess one day he had just had it. We had all just sat down to dinner, him, Mama who was eight months pregnant with my baby brother, my big brother Humam, my uncle Imad and I. Papa had the same worried far off look he always got after he came from work, like he was trying to remember something but can't quite put his finger on it, or like he was waking up from a strange dream. For a while he just sits there, listening to mama ask Humam and I about school and Imad about the latest gossip he's heard from the guys he knows in the palace. And then, without warning, papa stands up and hurls his plate kofta and rice at the wall, where it shatters. And then he starts yelling.

Not at anyone, he seems to be addressing the now meat and rice stained wall more than anyone in particular, yelling and cursing and throwing insults that would make a sailor blush. And as quickly as he started its over. He sinks back down in his chair, puts his hands over his face and begins to shake like a dry leaf in a stiff breeze. There's a moment of stunned silence. Humam and I exchange a look and even though he's seven years older than me, I can see my own fear reflected in his eyes.

This isn't right, our eyes say to each other. Papa isn't like this.

And we are right. Papa isn't like this. In fact in all the years of my short life, our Papa has never acted like that. Our Papa, our hardworking, non-complaining, logical, quiet, loving, bookish Papa has never even raised his voice. And it scares us.

About ten seconds later we are shooed to our room so that the grown ups can talk privately. My big brother being my big brother however, he brings the water glass he was drinking from and presses it against the door so he can listen. We take turns pressing our ear to the bottom of the glass, and catch snaches of muffled conversation. I don't understand what their talking about, theres a lot of big words and ideas that I'm too young to understand yet, but its easy to realize that all of them are scared. And angry.

The muffled conversations don't stop there. In fact they keep building in frequency almost as much as they keep shrinking in volume. Things began turning up at our house, brought in mostly by Mama and Uncle Imad. Little things, like water bottles, road maps and dark fabric. Two months pass and mama gives birth to my little brother Jawdah and sells almost all his birth gifts. She comes back with almost four-thousand opjad in cash. Weeks turn into months as gear piles up and cash is squirreled away into a large sugar bowl on the top shelf. I sit by and wonder what on earth is going on.

My sixth birthday comes on the 28th of January, 3 days before the Hamjab, a week long celebration of Najm Al Din, the founder of Bialya, for each day he survived the Mad King Qutaybah's attempts to kill him by blade, arrow and fist by the grace of god. During the celebration no man is to lift a hand against another unless in self defense. Including Queen Bee's soldiers.

Little did I know that had been the gap my parents and uncle had been waiting for. My party was vastly elaborate, crammed with relatives, expensive food, all my friends from school and I had my first kiss with a boy named Rami. Looking back, my parents must have felt guilty about the fact that in three days they would be taking me away from everything I had ever known. This was our last hurrah in Bialya, a final celebration to say goodbye and leave without any regrets. That night I went to bed a queen.

Three days later I was awoken to Humam shaking my shoulder gently. It was still dark out and he hadn't turned on a light, a fact that confused me.

_"Mama told me to get you up"_ he said.

_"Get your clothes on, and don't turn on the light."_

_"Why?"_ I said.

_"Its a game. We have got to get dressed as quickly as possible in the dark and then we have to go out to meet Papa and Uncle Imad. And the first one to make a noise until Papa says so loses."_

_"Where are we going?"_

_"Out. Oh and pretend the house is on fire and you can only bring three things, ok?"_

_"Wouldn't we call the firehouse if the house was on fire?"_

_"Those are the rules Hafsa. In the game, there no firehouse."_

_"Ok…"_

_"Good. Now get dressed!"_

I did. Picking the three things was harder. I took my doll, Aafreen, and my silk scarf that was a birth gift from Grandma, but I got stuck on the last object. Finally Humam gets sick of waiting for me and pulls out a battered but beautiful book of fairytales from the shelf.

_"Take this and get going! I've been ready for forever!"_

I stuck my tongue out at him but hurried all the same. Little did I know that would be the last time I would ever see the bedroom we had shared since I was two...

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><p>So… Yah… Meet Hafsa everyone! Because I don't have a lot to say about her just yet (Working on it I promise!) I'm going to tell you about my perception of Bialya….<p>

I invision Bialya as a place of rich history, innovations and traditions that has fallen on hard times. (The whole Queen Bee thing)

For the most part everyone tries to live their lives best they can, and it's a relatively normal, except for the fact that the rest of the world sort of avoids it like the plague. Like the Ottoman Empire, Bialya functioned quite peacefully as a Monarchy from the 11th century till the 20th, when pressure of the modern world and its steadily dissolving aristocracy prompted the government to become a constitutional monarchy in 1908. This, also, went smoothly until there was a military coup by Queen Bee's adolescent mother in the early 70's. Only having a semi-legitimate claim to the throne, Queen Bee's mother, in an attempt to protect her new found power, turned Bialya into a Military Dictatorship and ruled with an iron fist. Queen Bee was born in 1982 and became the country's dictator when she turned eighteen, shortly after her mother died in suspect circumstances. It is believed she is an illegitimate child and has no royal blood whatsoever, but so far all attempts to prove this have ended in failure in rather grand and explosive ways.

Bialya borrows traits from the countries in the Arab League, but due to my limited knowledge (besides what I find on the internet) I may get things wrong, so I apologize if I offend anyone. Oh, and to anyone who is wondering, opjad is a made up currency. One opjad equals about 38 cents in USD.

Should I continue? Yes? No? Tell me all about it in the Reviews section.

Zoo Out, Peace!


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